


Fear & Loathing

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-02-23 13:32:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2549339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The intersection of P!atD and K&R, fic vignettes of various 'verses to be read to Panic! songs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1. This is Gospel

**Author's Note:**

> Don't even look at me, I have no excuses for this throwback-to-bad-fic-tropes shit.

“This sort of ridiculous, noble need to save me from myself, is what we live with, Michael. Criminals deal with it all the time from family and lovers. And I _am_ a criminal, I am, I’m a rogue, a knave. And I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. And I know you truly believe that you can save me, that you can fix whatever broke in me to make me like this life, to make me amoral and cynical, and you probably can. But I don’t want you to. I’m a rogue, and you’re a knight, and that’s fine, but every time you try to change me – it’s what we live with, as criminals, it’s why we resent people like you, because we don’t want to change. I see nothing wrong with tricking rich men into giving me money. It’s the rest of the world, the ones who’ve got money, who see something wrong with it. And that’s your problem. Not ours. So, just, let me go.”


	2. 2. Miss Jackson

“Are you still trying to arrest me?” Fisk says, his teeth flashing bright under the blacklight as he grins at Michael.

Michael’s stomach does a funny flip, because Fisk is so _happy_ when he’s up to no good that the joy becomes contagious, even if the reasons Fisk is happy leave a sour taste in Michael’s mouth when he thinks about them – Fisk is an art thief, and Michael _knows_ stealing is wrong, it is, especially since the people who buy the paintings Fisk sells are the worst of humanity, but Fisk… Fisk is slipping away into the club’s depths, the crowd swallowing him up like a shipwreck at sea.

With a sigh and a nod to his partner to stay where she is – Rosamund gives a little unhappy frown, but nods in agreement – he follows Fisk.

He catches up to Fisk when he’s in the most packed part of the crowd, and Fisk rolls his eyes. “Dog with a bone, huh, Mike?”

“Nonopherian Fisk,” Michael starts, and Fisk clamps a hand over his mouth. The thief is right next to Michael now, close enough that Michael can see the tiny smudges of mascara on Fisk’s eyelids, the beads of sweat glistening on his skin, because it really is quite warm in here, and Fisk is wearing a leather jacket, and—and Fisk is smirking and sliding his hand away from Michael’s mouth, into where Michael’s too-long hair is starting to stick to his neck.

Fisk kisses him, grins into his mouth and licks his way inside, and Michael’s far too wrecked to resist, he might even be kissing back, and then something cold closes around his wrist, and someone beside him yelps, and Fisk winks at him before slipping away into the crowd.

By the time Michael gets himself free and apologizes to the civilian Fisk cuffed him to, the thief is gone. Rosamund meets him by the back door of the club, which is standing open, and Michael blushes but manages to say, “Any idea where he’s headed?”

“None,” says Rosamund, and she’s watching him like she isn’t quite sure what to do with him.

He slides his handcuffs into his pocket and finds one of Fisk’s many rings there. This one is rather unisex, just silver scrolls around a fleck of black stone that might be obsidian. Michael tucks it back in his pocket without showing Rosa.


	3. 3. Vegas Lights

Jack won’t shut up on the way to Tallowsport. Fisk sits there, nodding at the right moments as his old partner rambles – how his employer will make everything worth it, how Fisk’s back on the winning side, how good it feels to be surrounded by other criminals instead of fools. Fisk might even be able to listen without feeling sick, except he can’t so much as blink without seeing his last memory of Michael. It feels like it’s been tattooed to his eyelids, a grisly tableau of his only friend in the world dying.

By the time they’re close to Tallowsport, Fisk’s left the numbness of shock and burns with hatred in a way that makes him surprised, sometimes, that Jack doesn’t drop dead from the venomous glares Fisk levels at his old mentor’s back. And he’s almost glad that he can’t forget Michael. It keeps him from forgetting why he’s here. He can’t lose sight of his goals – killing Roseman, Jack, and Dawkins – when he relives his reason for destroying them every time he closes his eyes. Roseman, Jack, Dawkins.

“Those are the lights of Tallowsport,” Jack says, finally.

Fisk smiles.


	4. 5. Nicotine

“I’m planning on distracting you from my schemes with sex,” you tell Jack, and he laughs as he lets you in his room.

He still watches you like a hawk the next day, albeit with a faint smirk, but you still show up in his room that night and say, “I hate you, you know that, right?”

“I believe you,” he says, and you don’t know if you believe that.

“Michael’s a better person than you,” you say, when he’s kissing you. “He’s everything.”

“Except this,” says Jack. You have to agree – Michael is everything except Jack. And you want Michael, you _do_ , you can hardly breathe for fear you’ll screw up and get him killed, you miss him, but he’s not Jack, and you also want Jack.

You tell Jack this is the last time. You tell him it twice, three times, four, until it’s just something you say, because you can’t shake this off. Can’t shake him off.

Some men are addicted to ale, or whores, or gambling. For you, it’s Jack.

You hate him all the more for it.


	5. 6. Girls/Girls/Boys

Fisk isn't an idiot. Well, mostly. He's an idiot in that he's apparently going soft, and his stupid soft spot's name is Kathy, and what makes it doubly idiotic is that Kathy is his best friend's sister. And rich. And underage. And engaged to another guy.

So, Fisk is an idiot to an exponential degree, but he's not oblivious, which is the point.

Even though he and Kat have never discussed her love life, he knows Kathy's fiance has a side squeeze named Meg. She's poor (like Fisk) and underage (like Kathy) and in addition to her boyfriend (who's rich, underage, and engaged to Kathy), she's got a girlfriend (Kathy).

Which, hey, Fisk isn't going to stand in the way of the makings of a functional menage a trois for an unrequited crush. Except for how it's not unrequited.

When Kathy isn't in the media spotlight with her fiance, or sneaking around with her girlfriend, she's with Fisk. And even though Fisk has absolutely zero intentions of making an honest woman out of her (rich, two significant others, and again, his best friend's underage sister), he has quite a few less noble intentions involving a horizontal surface and significantly less clothes than usual.

So he confronts her. It's a cocktail party; Rupert-the-rich-fiance is off canoodling with Meg-the-poor-mutual-girlfriend, no one is sober enough to notice them gone, and they're alone in a side room when he makes that case to her, so he and only he can see the way a warm pink tinge appears in her cheeks, and how her pupils are dilated, and it's all for Fisk, not for Rupert or Meg.

"I'm sorry," Kathy says, even as she lets Fisk pull her close. "I can't do this. Not to Meg and Rupert."

"Oh, come on, this thing with Rupert isn't serious, it's all for show for the press."

"But me and Meg are. I like her. As much as I like you, I like Meg too, and I can't—I can't."

"If you change your mind..." Fisk says. Because he's seen enough to know that no relationship is permanent.

"I know where to find you," she replies. Then, "Living with my brother."

Which... is a fair point.

She kisses his cheek on the way out of the room, and Fisk doesn't move for a while.


	6. 7. Casual Affair

"Your husband is a bad person," Michael told Fisk. He'd been given rather strict orders not to discuss the Bannister investigation, especially not with Fisk himself, Bannister's trophy husband. Because there was a risk that Fisk was a partner in business as well as personal matters. But looking at Fisk's young, honest face, he couldn't believe the man had anything to do with his scumbag husband's criminal enterprises.

"A bit of financial fraud is hardly defining of evil," said Fisk. "Why are you so fervent, Agent Sevenson?"

"He's funding a domestic terrorist cell with his smuggling organization, which is responsible for sixteen deaths this year alone. It's more than 'a bit of financial fraud'," said Michael.

From the look on Fisk's face, it's obvious he didn't know.

"If I help you," Fisk said quietly, "I want Jack safe. No death penalty."

Michael, who'd privately been rooting for lethal injection, bit his lip. But Fisk's help could be useful...

Fisk wasn't entirely sure what he was doing. When Jack was home, he kissed his husband and discussed business with him and somehow didn't reveal his secret even when Jack pressed him down into the sheets of their California King bed and reminded Fisk why they'd gotten together in the first place.

But when Fisk was free to wander, he spent his time with Michael Sevenson. Mostly for the novelty of someone who's friendly without ulterior motives. And then somehow it became something else, Fisk dragging Michael in by his stupid, ordinary, cheap tie and lowering them both to the hotel's full bed.

"You're married," Michael argued, even as he fought with the buttons on Fisk's silk shirt.

Fisk snorted. "Not for long."

"I'm a federal agent. You're a witness and an ex con. I can't--"

"Half the fun of affairs is that you aren't supposed to be together."

"Affair," said Michael. "Right. Just a casual fling. No strings attached. Just sex."

He sounded so disappointed that Fisk paused, hands still on the man's bare chest, and said, "Don't limit it. Could go anywhere from here."

"Anywhere," Michael agreed, and then returned to the far more important matter of getting Fisk's pants off.


	7. 8. Far Too Young to Die

I hadn’t expected Michael to show, so I stared at him for a while before he voiced it for me.

“I honestly did not expect you to actually turn up,” he said. “Forgive me if I have trouble speaking.”

“Yeah, gotta say, I didn’t think…” I trailed off. Maybe that saying about absence making the heart grow fonder had some truth – I’d been in love with the fool for so long I forget if I fell in love at first sight or if it was gradual, if there was ever a time I looked at him and didn’t love him. This was more. This was desperation, like coming across real water in a desert after months of mirages, like plants must feel in a drought, or a particularly long winter.

I wasn’t sure if I had gone mad, or if my intense, ballad-like infatuation was fact, but I didn’t care. Judging by the way Michael sighed and held me close when I surged forward to kiss him, he was just as resigned to devotion as me.

I wondered how long I’d last before I left again. Three months, then nearly three years. If the rate of change held, it could be almost six years.

Michael didn’t seem to care about the math, so I let him distract me.


	8. 9. Collar Full

Judith is very logical about things. Acceptable risk – weigh the benefits against the negative consequences, determine if the possible gain is worth the possible losses, if the losses are near certain, probability of things not working out versus working out. She’d explained this to the ninny, too, that Judith could easily be put to death for this.

And, of course, Rosamund’s head is full of dreams and ballads, and she has a plan, and it’s positively _mad_ , there’s no way that Judith can go for it, she’d be trading her safety and stability for the way the girl could make a flush creep up Judith’s collar with a smile, for how she looked when she’d just woken up and her red-gold hair is frizzy and catches the light like a torch on Calling Night, while risking the girl’s uncle (dangerous) and the law (more dangerous) and what happens if Rosamund leaves (catastrophic).

She’s considered every possibility, and she just has to tell Rosamund that she can’t run away with a noblewoman, except she’s saying “deal” and kicking the door shut and kissing Rosamund, and isn’t that just the strangest thing?


	9. 10. The End of All Things

“Are you all right, lass?” Addy asked Rosamund.

She bit her lip. “I just – Rudy’s gone, and even when he gets back, we’re going to have a _baby_ , and—how did your parents do it, Addy? How did they raise you on the road?”

Addy sighed and set her tea to the side. “You’re so _young_. I forget sometimes, how young… for both me and Edith, when Mama was pregnant, she stayed behind, and Papa went out and travelled. This was before he was even in the Guild, so the only guarantee of payment he had was that magica viol, and wicked men often try to steal it.”

“That must have been terribly frightening for Gwen,” said Rosamund.

“Mama is tough. You need to be tough too, Rosamund. You must have had a core of steel about you, to run away and become a player. But now you’re to be a mother, so you have to change, so you can protect your children. And it will seem like everything has changed, because mostly it will have, but… well, will your feelings for Rudy change?”

“Never!” Rosamund said immediately.

“Then trust that his for you will not, either.”

“I’m going to go write him a letter!” the girl said, as her entire face lit up, and she hastened off as quickly as her growing belly would allow her.

Addy rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Like living in one of Papa’s romances, but after the curtain has gone down.”


End file.
